Hi, my name is Stephanie and I blog over at Clockwork Lemon . During the day I work as a project analyst helping companies get government money but I spend my evenings and weekends working on baking and decorating projects. I love playing with new recipes and trying different decorating techniques. I find lots of inspiration from other baking blogs and flickr groups, who needs baking classes when you can find step by step instructions for almost anything online?
Marshmallow fondant is easy to make and pretty fun to use. You can cover cakes and cookies with it to give them a smooth professional-looking finish or you can cut out shapes and designs to decorate your icing with. Its cheaper to make your own fondant than it is to buy it pre-made plus the pre-made stuff tastes a bit like cardboard unless you are willing to pay for a very high end product.
All you need is:
- Marshmallows – they can be big marshmallows or mini ones, either one works fine.
- Icing sugar – You’ll be mixing the icing sugar into the marshmallows to make a dough so I usually make sure that I have an entire bag on hand.. but I rarely use the whole bag.
- Food colouring
- Flavoring oil – This is optional. If you don’t add this, your fondant will be sweet and flavorless which works well if your got all the flavors your want in your cake already.
This time I decided to make it with those mini fruit flavored marshmallows. I had to sort them by colour first. I figured they would add a little bit of flavor to the fondant so I wouldn’t have to add much flavoring oil.
I use gel colours to dye my fondant but regular food colouring will work too. You won’t be able to get really dark colours without making your fondant sticky, but for lighter colours you can just even it out with more icing sugar.
I also had lemon oil and coconut flavoring on hand.. oh la la the value brand (which still works fine).
Step One:
Take a couple of handfuls of marshmallows and put them in a microwave safe bowl. Add a couple of drops of water and toss the marshmallows in it until they are all a bit damp. If you are going to just make one colour then put the whole bag of marshmallows in the bowl and add a couple of teaspoons of water. If you’re going to put flavoring oil in, add it now and add less water
I like to make smaller batches because its easier to add the colour to the melted marshmallow than it is to work the colour into the fondant later.
Step Two:
Stick the marshmallows in the microwave for ten seconds at a time until the are puffed up and easily stir into a goo with a wooden spoon. Tip: Grease your spoon with butter, things can get a bit sticky.
Step Three:
Add food colouring to the melted marshmallows until you get the colour you want. Remember that you’re going to be adding icing sugar which will lighten the colour so make it a bit brighter than you need.
Start folding icing sugar into the marshmallow goo until it becomes a soft and fluffy dough. Grease your hands with a bit of butter and turn the marshmallow out onto a table sprinkled with icing sugar. Continue to knead in icing sugar until the fondant is stiff enough to roll out.
If you add too little icing sugar the fondant will be very sticky- Just add more icing sugar
If you add too much icing sugar the fondant will be very stiff and hard to roll out – knead in a little bit of butter
Fondant with the icing sugar kneaded in.
For this batch of colours I made larger batches of lighter colours and then worked some extra gel colouring into the already made fondant to make smaller batches of darker colours. The dark purple and dark green were made from the a light pink and light green.
All you need to do is knead the gel colour in.. it takes a while to get it all mixed in which is why I only do it for smaller batches.
~ Stephanie
My husband just tried making fondant for the very first time this past weekend for my daughter’s (5th) Birthday. Her bday theme was Olivia the Pig and he looked up online how to make fondant and found a marshmallow recipe. He deisgned the cake himself, took him 2 days to make it from start to finish but it was amazing (and 3D I might add!):)I’ll be blogging about the party and posting pics soon.
Sarah
HandbagsnPigtails.blogspot.com
Stephanie,
Thanks so much for the tutorial! We’ve had several people ask us about fondant lately, so this is perfect!
awesome tutorial – I detest the taste of pre-made fondant and I can hardly wait to try this out… oooh, cake contest at the school soon!!!
OK, I’m a novice. I haven’t heard of icing sugar before. Is it the same as confectioner’s sugar? I know I’ve made glazes before with confectioner’s sugar. Just wondering. Thanks for the tutorial!
Icing sugar is the same as confectioner’s sugar and powdered sugar 🙂
I’ve always been intimidated by fondant, but this seems like something I can actually try without wanting to stomp out of the kitchen in a rage!
That is so cool! I have wanted to try fondant, but I don’t want to spend a ton of money on something that doesn’t taste good. I want to bake something just so I can try this out! Halloween cake maybe?! 🙂
thanks for the tutorial!
Hey I want to make this, but I want a pure white fondant. Will using white marshmallows get this result? Would the tiny amounts of butter for greasing tinge it at all?
If you click on the link to her blog, that would be the best place to ask her. Because this is an older post, she likely doesn’t check here for comments anymore. Thanks!
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